Some steroid glycosides have a common chemical structure and acts on the heart with an effect of promoting its action. These glycosides are called cardiac glycoside, and contained in a wide variety of plants belonging to Liliaceae, Scrophularia and Apocynaceae. The cardiac glycoside strengthens the contraction of cardiac muscle directly and thus commonly used as an inotropic agent. Frequently used ones are digitoxin, digoxin, methyldigoxin, deslanoside, digilanides, ouabain and proscillaridin. Among them, those obtained from Scrophularia, such as digitoxin, digoxin, methyldigoxin, deslanoside and digilanides, are called digitalis and particularly widely used as an inotropic agent. And thus in some cases the term digitalis generically represents the cardiac glycosides in a broad sense.
Though cardiac glycosides are widely used as an inotropic agent, poisoning symptoms called digitalism are sometimes caused when used in an excessive amount. In the case of using cardiac glycoside such as digoxin which is excreted mainly through renal routes, a patient with impaired renal function is more likely to develop the digitalism. Examples of such symptoms are alimentary problems including loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea; visual impairment including xanthopsia, chloropsia and ambiopia; nervous system abnormalities including dizziness, headache, disorientation and mental derangement. In addition, more serious symptoms such as severe bradycardia, bigeminy, chaotic ventricular extrasystole and paroxysmal atrial tachycardia may be caused, sometimes developing into atrioventricular block, ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation.
When such toxic symptom appears, doses should be reduced or ceased, and medical treatment to alleviate the symptom becomes necessary. In the case of suffering from a serious symptom, desirable treatment is to lower the concentration level of the cardiac glycoside in body fluid rapidly. Preferable treatment for prompt level down of the cardiac glycoside concentration may be blood purification, but hemodialysis is generally considered of no effect. In addition, sufficient therapeutic effect cannot be obtained in some cases even by blood adsorption method with activated charcoal, which has been assumed to be most effective. For these reasons, a process for adsorbing and removing a larger amount of cardiac glycosides is desired.
The present invention has been made in order to solve the above problems.
An object of the present invention is to provide an adsorbent for adsorbing and removing cardiac glycoside from body fluid efficiently, a process for adsorbing and removing cardiac glycoside in body fluid and an adsorber for cardiac glycoside.